The invention relates to an apparatus for rock drilling. The apparatus includes a rock drilling machine and a drilling tool connectable to the rock drilling machine. The rock drilling machine has means for moving the drilling tool around its longitudinal axis during the drilling.
The invention further relates to a rock drilling rig and method for drilling. In rock drilling, drill holes are drilled to rock material or soil by means of rock drilling machines arranged to rock drilling rigs. The drill holes may be drilled in mines, quarries and construction work sites and the drill holes may be blast holes, reinforcing holes or drill holes having any other purpose. During the drilling the drilling machine rotates a drilling tool around its longitudinal axis. The rotating drilling tool and rotating machine parts of the rock drilling machine may cause entanglement and severe injuries for drillers.
Typically protection against rotating parts of the rock drilling unit is taken care by preventing access to the rotating parts during the operation, or to stop the rotation movement before a person enters a dangerous zone. The known measures are to prevent access or to stop movement before people enter danger zone. Fixed guards as well as other physical protecting devices, such as protection cages, which enclose dangerous rotating parts of the drilling unit, may provide proper protection but they also have some disadvantages. The protection cages and alike increase weight of the drilling unit, add costs and decrease visibility. Disadvantage of access control systems monitoring the dangerous drilling zone is that they do not provide sufficient reliability. Thus, the present solutions have some problems and they do not provide satisfactory solutions for protecting the drillers without hampering productivity of the drilling.